FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT ONLINE EDUCATION - PAGE 5

There is a dark cloud is building over America's campuses that threatens to plunge the hallowed collegial quads into a profound gloom. Then again, maybe there isn't. The feared menace is on-line education, which is expanding like a tropical storm system as academic institutions and private companies scramble to make a profit from the Internet's tremendous capacity for delivering information. Tech visionaries speak dizzily of anywhere, anytime learning: The beach at noon!

University of Illinois officials expected their Global Campus project to start small. But when online classes began Wednesday, there were fewer than 15 students enrolled, far lower than the 75 students predicted last year. Officials attribute the low enrollment to having little time to market the project after a four-month delay in getting it approved by university trustees. U. of I. President B. Joseph White, who has predicted that online enrollment will eventually exceed the 70,000 students at the university's three traditional campuses combined, has banked his reputation on the project's success.

I was sorry to read David McGrath's comments regarding online learning ("Apathy in online education," Commentary, Oct. 1). He finds online students to be untruthful and untrustworthy. An assignment to write a research paper for an English composition class can, indeed, lend itself to plagiarism. But this is not endemic to "distance learning." I recall the time when the media focused a lot of attention on a high school teacher who failed almost her entire class because students plagiarized for her assignment from something they found on TV. For the whole class to have done the same thing at the same time indicates that the students did not realize how unacceptable this was. I am a retired educator, yet I blame the teachers for this infraction.

Indian Prairie District 204 is beginning to explore the future of learning through a virtual high school, and board members got an introduction to the ramifications of cyberspace education on Monday night. In Florida, for example, 1,500 students are taking classes on-line and pursuing their high school degrees outside the traditional classroom, said Supt. Gail McKinzie, and Indian Prairie officials believe there could be a similar market here. "There's great potential for accessing parts of the student body that we aren't reaching," said McKinzie.

Groundhog candidate A Monday debate of candidates for Cook County Board president brought out some fancy rhetoric by one of the hopefuls, Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Terrence O'Brien. Noting that Feb. 2 is both Election Day and Groundhog Day, O'Brien declared: "And that is the day that Terrence J. O'Brien will crawl out of the sewers of the Water Reclamation District and see his shadow at the front door of the County Building." More slacktivism Answering a Facebook meme urging women to share their bra color, ostensibly in the name of breast cancer awareness, men are now being urged to aid prostate cancer awareness by revealing their underwear preference -- "boxers," "briefs," "jocks" or "commando."

DeVry Inc., the Oakbrook Terrace-based owner of for-profit technical schools, will buy U.S. Education, an operator of health-care colleges, for $290 million from private-equity firm ClearLight Partners LLC. U.S. Education owns Apollo College and Western Career College, which provide nursing and health-care degrees to 8,700 students on 17 campuses, Newport Beach, Calif.-based ClearLight said Wednesday. DeVry, which has more than 48,000 students, had revenue of $933.5 million in fiscal year 2007.

As a growing number of the nation's colleges and universities offer on-line courses, two reports being released Wednesday caution that there is little proof the new technology is effective. The reports question how the courses are evaluated, their cost, whether students have equal access to the new technology and the apparently higher dropout rates for on-line students, among other issues. One report, by the College Board, warns that Internet courses could hinder the progress of minority and poor students who arrive at college with less exposure to computers than white or more affluent students.

Where will trained technicians come from when experienced telecommunications workers retire? How can regional telephone companies and other communications corporations fill a growing need for high-tech workers? On-line education for college degree credit, may be one answer, according to the National Advisory Coalition for Telecommunication Education and Learning (NACTEL), an industry partnership of telecommunications companies and the unions that represent technical workers. NACTEL members -- including Bell Atlantic, GTE, SBC Communications, US West, Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers -- are teaming to offer an associate degree in telecommunications, delivered completely on-line with Internet technology.

Wells Fargo & Co., which has more than 800 workers in downtown Chicago, plans to add 50 employees to its local workforce over the next year. The boost in local payroll will come in such areas as insurance, commercial banking and wealth management — but not in retail branch banking. The San Francisco-based megabank has more than 6,000 branches in the U.S., more than any other bank, but only about 10 are in the Chicago area. And that's unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, Wells Fargo Chief Executive John Stumpf says.

Valley View School District 365U board members have voted to extend the contract of Superintendent James A. Mitchem Jr. Mitchem agreed to reduce certain benefits in his new five-year contract, school officials said. His contract now includes the same two percent contractual raise that teachers received in 2013-14. In addition, in accordance with the district-wide administrative cuts authorized by the school board in May, several of Mitchem's current fringe benefits have been reduced and match the terms of the teacher's contract.